Weekend Box Office (03/31-04/02): ‘Boss Baby’ Beats ‘Beast’

Dreamworks pulled out all the stops for their newest animated flick, ‘The Boss Baby’ featuring Alec Baldwin as the voice of a wisecracking infant, including copious TV promotion (Jimmy Kimmel voiced the dad and used his talk show to promote the film), online and social media initiatives (the highest online views for a trailer in Dreamworks Animation history), radio, and more. Balwin is riding a wave of success with his Donald Trump impressions on ‘SNL’, which spoke to many parents. Like many Dreamworks Animation films, ‘The Boss Baby’ drew references from current pop culture which enticed adults as well as kids to the tune of $50.3 million, dethroning Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ which reigned supreme for two weeks.

But ‘B&B’ didn’t fall far. It still took in $47.5M, bringing it just shy of $400M in the U.S. and nearly an additional $500M internationally and is still the #2 movie at the U.S.box office.

Paramount’s ‘Ghost In The Shell’ basically crapped out at $18.6M. Part of that blame could be placed on the “white washing scandal” of casting Caucasian Scarlett Johansson as an Asian character (in the original anime). But a lot has to do with the murky marketing of this movie, which basically made no sense, dazzling with visuals while revealing nothing of the actual plot (not everyone is a nerd who watches anime, folks). Some even called it “Wachowski-esque.” Ouch. Paramount essentially knew they had a stinker on their hands and held back on press screenings and when they did offer them, all critics were attending CinemaCon. That’s never a good sign. It still did enough to come in third place, though, so that’s… okay.

The Boss Baby (20th Century Fox/Dreamworks Animation) – $50.3M

Beauty and the Beast (Disney) – $47.5M

Ghost In The Shell (Paramount) – $18.6M

Saban’s Power Rangers (Lionsgate) – $14.4M

Kong: Skull Island (20th Century Fox/Legendary) – $9.1M

Lionsgate’s ‘Power Rangers’ took a big dive. It looks like die-hard fans showed up for opening weekend, but there wasn’t much interest to carry it forward beyond that. Still, a sequel will most likely happen. As for Lionsgate’s envisioned five to seven sequels…. that’s looking less likely.

Next week ‘The Fate of the Furious’ opens. I’m gonna guess it will be #1. I dunno. I’ve never seen a single film in this franchise. But people seem to like them. So yay cars! Or whatever. (So long as we don’t get another Wiz Kalifah theme song that plays every five minutes on the radio.)

Jax Motes

Jax's earliest memory is of watching 'Batman,' followed shortly by a memory of playing Batman & Robin with a friend, which entailed running outside in just their underwear and towels as capes. When adults told them they couldn't run around outside in their underwear, both boys promptly whipped theirs off and ran around in just capes.